There have been changes in attitude toward middle age with the changes of lifestyles, and middle-aged and senior persons who care about maintaining a high quality of everyday life, so called “active seniors”, are increasing. The health-consciousness of society overall shows an inclination toward self-medication. With this trend, awareness of daily health care is increasing among the active seniors.
Typical health problems common to persons of middle-age and older are lower back pain, shoulder pain, sensitivity to cold temperatures, blurred vision, and the like. From now on, to alleviate, cure or prevent these symptoms through daily life at home will be a popular choice among the middle-aged and senior adults. Taking for instance, heat therapy with a disposable heat pack body warmer (a heating element containing oxidizable metal) applied to the affected part, e.g., the lower back is known to help provide pain relief. It is expected that such heat therapy will become increasingly popular on the individual level.
In this connection, JP-A-2002-65714 and JP-A-2002-78727 propose an eye mask-type vision improving device and an eye mask-type meibomian gland function improving device which both supply steam to and around the eyes. These treating devices supply steam at temperatures safe to the body to and around the eyes thereby to relax and improve the ciliary muscle, improve the vision, or improve the meibomian gland function. Since the devices are designed to be applied to and around the eyes, the time of supplying steam is so short as not to adversely affect these parts of the body, i.e., several tens of minutes at the most. These devices aim at improvement of vision or the meibomian gland function. The cited publications do not mention whether the devices are capable of relieving lower back pain, abdominal pain, and the like.
Apart from the treating devices, JP-A-2003-102761 discloses a thin heat-generating sheet as a heat generating element that can be used for heat therapy. The sheet is extremely thin and yet exhibits excellent heat generating characteristics as a heat generating element. The sheet is characterized by a uniform thickness and high productivity. There still is an increase in demand for a heat generating sheet producing still higher therapeutic effects in step with the aging of the population.